The game is probably as optimized as it's going to get. At this stage to eke significant performance gains, it seems like they'd have to rewrite the renderer to parallelize more of the drawcalls. Since this is still technically a DX11 game (Vulkan API is only a compatibility option and garners no real performance benefits) there's still a huge emphasis on single core load with both Driver overhead and the primary render pipeline stuck on one pipeline.

Converting to true Vulkan multicore/multithread optimization is an engine-level change, likely far outside the scope and perhaps experience of the team, to say nothing of potential legal ramifications when changing the Engine in such a way (I don't know the EULA of Unity, I have no idea how much you can modify)

Given the nature of Valheim, it's one of the few games that could really benefit from AI driven upscaling (FSR or DLSS) but even that isn't a quick fix.

Originally posted by FXtrt:

... unplayable ... 30–45 frames ...

My first Valheim run was at ~12fps on a dodgy laptop. 30-45 frames is very playable.

Your computer is now 6 years old and in gaming tech that is considered pretty ancient. It's not terrible, but it ain't great by any means.

Could the game be better optimized? I'm sure it could but devs usually save the serious optimization for when the game is much closer to being 100% done so don't hold your breath. I'd imagine you'd get at least 5-10 more FPS once all is said and done.

Could your aging computer be better though? It sure could.

Like I'm just gonna say it, people who think a game should run "Well" Just because it doesn't look photorealistic are a huge problem in the gaming sphere.

There are almost no circumstances of a game running poorly because of its graphics, because graphics can be scaled by the user. Most games have poor (Relative to how they look) performance because the Processor is handling a lot of complex things in the background like Simulating, and Valheim in particular is doing A LOT of simulation.

This is why a game like Dwarf Fortress, which has ASCII graphics, can even make an RTX4090 based system drop to single digits. Dwarf Fortress is in reality, a highly styled Monte Carlo simulation, and the CPU (And memory) is doing such titanic amounts of work as the Game progresses, that even something like a 7900X will eventually be overwhelmed.

And again, this is a game that has ASCII graphics.

So while I have no doubt the Optimization on Valheim could be tightened up a bit, the fact is, Valheim runs so comparatively poorly with how it looks, because it has to. It's utilizing a lot of processor time in order keep the simulation running and properly track everything that needs to be tracked. This is also why scaling the graphics up and down has very little impact (Shadows and Lighting are usually the only settings that affect performance when we see a CPU bottleneck, at least by any appreciable amount)

In summation, if you want your performance in this game to be as good as possible, you need to get either a 7950X3D or a 13900K Processor. You need something that has brute force clock frequency and IPC throughput in order to push out more of the game's instructions in a shorter amount of time.

Going from a Ryzen 5000 to 7000 will net around 20% more FPS, going from a 10th or 11th Gen Intel CPU to a 13th Gen will net around 30% more FPS. It scales almost perfectly with clock speed which is like the number 1 indicator of a CPU bottleneck. So if you go from a Processor that is usually running around 4.0 GHZ multi core load, to one that can do 5.0GHZ multi core load, you'll see around a 25% performance uplift. Could be more, could be less by around 5%

There's edge cases of cousre, for example, going from a Ryzen 2700X to a Ryzen 5800X is more like a 40%-60% performance increase, because you gain not just clock speed, but reap the benefits of IPC (Instructions per clock) on AMD's much better Zen 3 architecture. A CPU's throughput is usually measured in IOPS and/or FLOPS, and the OPS are, in some very basic back-of-the-napkin-math (CLOCK)*(IPC) = FLOPS

In OP's case, going from a 7700k to a 13700k would likely see performance double, if not triple. The architectural and clock speed advantage of that large a gap is absolutely gargantuan. I think there are 13th generation PENTIUM processors, that outmatch the 7700k now. (A fine processor when it came out no doubt, and perfectly adequate to still play most games today.)

Deactivate Steam Overlay helped a lot for me.

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Most games have poor (Relative to how they look) performance because the Processor is handling a lot of complex things in the background like Simulating, and Valheim in particular is doing A LOT of simulation.

What and why is Valheim simulating a lot?

i have 60 fps but for some reason this game makes my pc up to 90 DEGREES CELSIUS even on the lowest settings and its only on this game.

Originally posted by Wundsaltz:

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Most games have poor (Relative to how they look) performance because the Processor is handling a lot of complex things in the background like Simulating, and Valheim in particular is doing A LOT of simulation.

What and why is Valheim simulating a lot?

It's not. Not any more than any other game might be... another game which is basically simulating very little.

Originally posted by Wundsaltz:

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Most games have poor (Relative to how they look) performance because the Processor is handling a lot of complex things in the background like Simulating, and Valheim in particular is doing A LOT of simulation.

What and why is Valheim simulating a lot?

Originally posted by Chris:

Originally posted by Wundsaltz:

What and why is Valheim simulating a lot?

It's not. Not any more than any other game might be... another game which is basically simulating very little.

Physics, wind, day night, growth cycle, AI, Factionstate, light and sound propegation. All these things are running constantly in loaded zones, and have to also be tracked in memory constantly so that when the player enters a new zones they update correctly.

Please do not comment on things you don't actually know about with blatant disinformation. Valheim is simulating a ton of things, moreover, it's having to simulate most of them in real time while also being a functioning game and level editor simultaneously. Having to redraw shadows every game tic alone is an insane CPU drain based on the day-night cycle simulation alone. (Which is why the game runs worst at early dawn)

Originally posted by sasha:

i have 60 fps but for some reason this game makes my pc up to 90 DEGREES CELSIUS even on the lowest settings and its only on this game.

Check to make sure it's actually 60FPS, not that you're just seeing 60FPS. The game could be running at like 120-360 but if your monitor is only 60HZ, you're only seeing 60FPS.

Oh yeah, nobody mentioned it, but when you're in Build Mode, your frame rate is often halved.

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Physics, wind, day night, growth cycle, AI, Factionstate, light and sound propegation. All these things are running constantly in loaded zones, and have to also be tracked in memory constantly so that when the player enters a new zones they update correctly.

What Physics? Once drops have settled and as long as buildings aren't meddled with I don't see what needs to be calculated. Growth cycles should be cheap to compute if implemented properly - Valheim isn't Factorio. Wind and lighting effects are hopefully handled by the GPU and shouldn't contribute to the CPU-bottleneck you've invoked. The AI in this game strikes me as very simplistic and hardly integrates player made structures in its pathing. Besides there tend to be less NPCs around bases unless you run a farm at the same spot.

Final optimization always happens right before release.
as they add new feature's, they do make a optimization pass, including during patches.
as new feature's are added, it breaks the optimization. also making more bugs. which require more passes of optimization for the new stuff. this is why full optimization is never done while a game is in development.

So Full optimization will come, but only when the game is near complete and full release.

There's some informative comments about this matter here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/892970/discussions/1/3775742435234595566/ But I don't know what the actual devs have planned.

Originally posted by FXtrt:

I love this game, especially building stuff, it is wonderful and amazing, but... there is always one "but" spoiling everything. Going above 7000–9000 instances made around you with builds or terraforming makes this game unplayable. I am averaging 30–45 frames after 7-9k instances and this is with i7 7700k, 1070 Ti and 16Gb of 3800 MHz RAM. I don't know if that setup considered weak or not, but I bet there should be at least 60 frames up to 30k instances, or it is unworthy. You just get punished for being creative, that how it feels like for me. I have a friend with even better pc he is on 3080 + some last get i5 and 32 GB RAM, and he is issuing the same frame drops down to 30 and even below.
It's been how long? About 3 years already? Idk, mb increase the price on the market to get motivation in developing. Or tell us that this will never happen, so we just move on. But I still believe, but can't find any dev posts about optimization and road plan in general.

Yeah, I think it's important to remember that the game isn't done yet. How can they optimize something that's unfinished? In the meantime, dial back your graphics settings when you're doing complex work and give the devs the time they need to finish their beautiful product in their due time.

We gave Factorio their space to make the game at whatever pace they wanted, and it's a masterpiece. Let Irongate do the same with Valheim and be patient.

USE nvidia image scaling feature that will help incrase fps. if your not sure what this does.
NVIDIA Image Scaling is a driver-based spatial upscaler and sharpener for GeForce GPUs for all games. This feature is accessible both from the NVIDIA Control Panel and GeForce Experience, and includes a per-game sharpening setting tunable from NVIDIA's In-game overlay . more info
https://www.msi.com/blog/max-fps-max-quality-nvidia-image-scaling its pretty helpfull. for me for a few games i have a 1080 my self and enabling this helps in many games at the cost of some quality but boosts the fps